


not in so many words ;

by therentyoupay



Category: Frozen (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 21:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6129925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therentyoupay/pseuds/therentyoupay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Elsa—lessons contain phrases like <em>arranged marriages</em>, contain discussions of the complexities of navigating a political world where alliances are built first and foremost on the precious ink that no one is ever willing to share; where the marks on one’s body can sing and screech like a weapon in the wrong hands, wrong minds, wrong kingdom, wrong bargainer; where <em>destiny</em> can be altered as leverage, can be made into sacrifices in the shape of cunning betrothal. A world, where, somehow, there are some words that were never intended to <em>lie</em>, and still the ravenous twist them, taint them, curl them for their own.</p><p>The lessons on arranged marriages are perfectly perfunctory, of course. With things as they are now, her parents would never agree to such a thing. It’s for the best, that her words have not yet appeared; for the better, perhaps, that she should never receive them at all.</p><p>Meanwhile, Jack's words hint that he <em>may or may not</em> possibly be under the divinely destined threat of future jail time.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>— In which Jack and Elsa are soulmates, but it might take a few centuries for them to get there. { Jack/Elsa ; Soulmate AU }</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thalassas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thalassas/gifts).



> _2/28/16._ What do I love more than a good fandom exchange? NOTHING, I tell you. 
> 
> **(LATE,** sorry, my bad) **Valentine’s Day Fandom Exchange:**  
>  This one-shot is one-half of a Valentine’s Day fandom exchange between **[@therentyoupay](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com)** and **[@knightsquall](http://knightsquall.tumblr.com)**. The other half to this joint-project is a gorgeous edit created by **@knightsquall**. Each contribution was designed, created/written, and posted with the other in mind; they are intended to act as companion pieces for a greater, overarching project, both based on the following prompt:
> 
>  **Prompt:**  
>  _Soulmate AU_ | “The first words your soulmate will say to you will appear as a tattoo on your body at a certain age.”
> 
> [ **THE** FIC | **THE** [EDIT](http://knightsquall.tumblr.com/post/140184348346/not-in-so-many-words-a-jelsa-fic-by) ]
> 
>  **Xris (@knightsquall):**  
>  Many of you already know the brilliance that is Xris ( **[@knightsquall](http://knightsquall.tumblr.com)** ), my eternal soulmate and name-twin. (She is also named Kris, and I refer to her by both Kris and Xris, but will stick with Xris henceforth to avoid confusion.) If you follow me on [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com), you probably already know her gorgeous edits and photosets, including the gorgeous fanart she has created for two of my other stories: _check the pipes for frost_ and _livable_. She is a lovely editor and contributor to the Jelsa fandom on all fronts!! Please go visit her blog, her Jelsa and fanworks tags, and spread some love for this ship and its fanartists. ♥ Xris and I have been meaning to do some sort of exchange for a while now (as well as write a Jelsa manifesto—that’s still a WIP!) and we finally found the time and the right prompt to fulfill! 
> 
> **Kris (@therentyoupay):**  
>  As stated during one of the many tumblr IMs passed back and forth between Xris and I during the planning stages of this project, my contribution to this joint-venture is essentially as follows: ”aaaaand here is the fic that xris wrote and kris simply fleshed out with some nice dialogue here and there, here is the exact prompt i received, good, now go look at hte preTTEYD EIT.” 
> 
> The ever-brilliant Xris is responsible for the selection of our prompt (i.e. Soulmate AU, first words as tattoo, etc.) as well as the specific words for both Jack and Elsa—to which I readily agreed. (I think we have all been itching for a Jelsa Soulmate AU, but Xris has been especially in love with the idea, haha.) Also courtesy of Xris is the major plot points, which I merely took off with (running), and fleshed out into a hopefully more comprehensive and detailed 10,000 or so words. This brilliance would not have been possible without Xris’ creativity and encouragement, and I am so glad we finally got around to completing this awesome project!
> 
> We hope you enjoy it!

 

 

* * *

  **not in so many words**

* * *

 

 

 

 _jack._  

* * *

   
His sister’s words appear when Jackson Overland has just turned fifteen and—to no one’s surprise—he is less than pleased.  
****

“You haven’t even reached your eighth winter yet!” Jack complains. He watches their mother carefully tailor each sleeve just one precious inch of fabric longer in order to hide the tiny script now forever inked into his sister’s left wrist. 

His sister looks up at his incredulous expression with wide, shocked eyes; Jack knows that she understands very little of what this means ( _and he’s worked rather hard to keep it that way, for as long as possible—so much for that_ ) so his restless outbursts must be more confusing than anything else. She’d looked so proud at first, and so excited, but now she is beginning to look very, very worried.

“Is that bad?”

“ _Hush_ , Jackson,” says his mother, double-checking the seams. She _tsks_ at him for good measure, but there is really no need; Jackson’s cheeks are already pinking in the firelight from the tell-tale use of his full name. “The script comes to everyone at different times, at different ages.” Her voice is soothing and calm, always trying to reassure them both, and Jack frowns at her tone. He’s the one that’s supposed to be doing the comforting around here.

“I’m not angry,” Jack whispers to the tiny figure under the bedcovers later that night, including the one that spared a strip of fabric to help decorate ( _disguise_ ) the edges of his sister’s lengthened sleeves. He is kneeling on the floor at her bed, dirt crusting into the knees of his pants, and she gazes up at him like she wants to believe him so very, very badly. “I’m not,” he promises, face flexing with the unbidden amusement which interrupts his perfectly honest expression.

“But you haven’t gotten yours yet,” Emily whispers quietly into the space beneath her blankets, and he has to strain to hear her. “And all of your friends have.” Her eyes take on special meaning. “ _All_ of them _.”_

Jack clicks his jaw, thoughtful and chastised. (Perhaps he should be more careful about _small, listening ears_ during his private conversations with mother.) “Perhaps,” Jack dismisses, and grins long and wide and careless, and Emily doesn’t believe him for one moment. “Perhaps Belinda wasn’t the love of my life, after all.”

Emily wrinkles her nose. “You like _Belinda?_ ”

“Not according to the heavens, I don’t,” Jack flicks his sister’s nose, eyes gleaming, and Emily relaxes at the familiar routine of ruse. There would be plenty to worry about later, Jack knows. _Not tonight_. “I’ll get mine eventually,” he tells her, and it’s all bravado but it tastes like hope and it sounds like he has every right to believe it. “Probably splashed right across my nose and my eyebrows.”

Emily’s eyes widen. “Can that _happen_?” 

“It’d certainly make it hard to hide, wouldn’t it?” Jack grins, and flicks her nose again for good measure. Emily rubs it through her glare, but at least she smiles afterwards.

“I bet you’re gonna get yours any day now,” Emily whispers, small and fragile, but oh so determined to give Jack _something_ , at least, before sleep takes her. “I bet you just haven’t gotten them because your soulmate isn’t close enough yet. There’s always travelers in the spring, aren’t there? Maybe they’ll be one of them.” Her eyes sparkle, and she yawns. “It’ll be somebody beautiful, and kind, and special. Somebody who won’t fall for your pranks.”

Jack’s heart clenches, quite without his control. “ _Everyone_ falls for my pranks.”

“She won’t,” Emily whispers, like a promise, and gently falls asleep. 

 

//

 

By the time spring arrives, their mother has already fashioned fabric bracelet-cuffs for Emily to wear, hiding the beautiful line of print that has appeared on her skin and will never go away. _A gift from the heavens_ , they say. _The key to one’s true partner; the sign by which all people find their soulmates, their husbands and wives, their loved ones; their families_.

There are very few travelers that year. Eventually, Jack’s sixteenth winter comes and still no words appear, but as much as it kills him, he also doesn’t mind.

The words on his mother’s right ankle may have been written by the heavens, but they didn’t stop his father from leaving, now did they?

 

//

 

All summer, Emily provides an endless list of excuses and explanations.

“Maybe they’re written someplace you can’t see—like on the back of your neck.”

Jack shakes his head. “Someone would see it eventually.” Still, it’s an unsettling thought: that someone would see the script before he could—further, that he’d only be able to see them in a reflection, never with his own eyes. (More importantly, he’d rather not have to trust someone to read them _to_ him. The script is supposed to be something private. Something that’s supposed to be special, and protected, and Jack would like to think that he knows a thing or two about that.)

“Besides,” he adds, and continues to fan his sunshine-flushed cheeks with the extra-large leaf he’s plucked from a tree. “Covering that up would be awful in the summertime, wouldn’t it?” The leaf is more useless than Old Man Cartwright’s whiskers, but at least it makes Emily laugh.

(So do Old Man Cartwright’s whiskers.)

“What if it’s written on the top of your head?” Emily asks after supper, and the thought it so strange and sudden that it catches Jack completely off-guard. “And we can’t see it because of all your hair?”

“Is that a suggestion that I might shave my _head_?”

“Emily,” chides their mother. “Stop frightening your brother. Jackson—vanity is a vice.”

“I’m not frightened! _Or_ vain!”

His mother tugs his ear none too gently, but when he pulls away to hide it beneath his palm, his mother is grinning from ear to ear.

“What if it really _is_ under all your hair?” Emily whispers under the bedcovers once more, but only after she’s certain that mother is too deep in dreams to hear them. 

Jack had almost fallen asleep with his head upon his crossed arms, his arms atop the mattress. Hadn’t he been telling her a story? He holds back a yawn.

“Then you shall probably have no choice but to learn how to properly shave my head,” Jack uttered, with utmost seriousness. “It’d be a shame if you accidentally nicked off one of the words.”

Emily’s eyes widen. “Don’t say that!”

Jack laughs breathlessly into the quiet of their little house, the nighttime sounds of crickets drifting in through the crack beneath the door that Jack still needs to fix. 

“Then maybe I’ll never know,” he answers, but what was intended as a laugh comes out far too close to the truth. 

For a long moment, there is only the crickets, and the knowledge that he is the elder, that he is the brother, and yet his little sister is the one with her true love’s first words to her already written on her skin. He is sixteen.

“She’ll be brave,” Emily supplies, because when all else fails, this is her favorite game. “And strong, and just, and friendly. I bet she’s going to make you fall in love with her instantly, whether you have any words on your skin or not.”

Jack gently flicks his sister’s nose, watches it crinkle, and says nothing.

He never says so, but it’s his (least) favorite game, too.

 

//

 

The following autumn, Jack meets someone new.

She is very pretty, and the daughter of a traveling merchant. She isn’t very strong, but she seems friendly, and he doesn’t know how brave she is, but he’s willing to bet that she could be, given the chance. 

(She doesn’t fall for any of his pranks either, but perhaps that’s mostly because he doesn’t pull any.) 

But he still can’t ignore the look that crosses her face when he opens his mouth for the first time and says, “Need a hand?” Against his better judgment, he’d spent the last hour carefully constructing what to say—picking and choosing his words with all the great discretion that a trickster mind can apply—and even, for a moment, allowing himself the fantasy of the great amusing story he would be able to tell if, in fact, those very words were written on _her_ hand—but then her smile turns dim, just one shade too far of _polite,_ and Jack knows it’s over before it’s even begun. 

“Thank you,” she says, and these are the words that should would _could_ be one day inked permanently onto his skin, but until it actually happens, there’s no point in hoping otherwise. 

Jack helps her father unload his wagon, takes home a small loaf of bread for his courtesy, and spends the rest of the evening pretending that it is simply another day, because it is.

 

//

 

Jack reaches his seventeenth winter.

It’s a bleak one, but there are patches of sunlight throughout. It’s common knowledge in the village that Jack had been born during a great, long blizzard, and that not even his own mother or the midwife knows the exact date of his birth. Emily likes to celebrate the anniversary of Jack’s birth during the season’s first snow and storm, especially as a way of passing the time indoors. Each year, his mother picks a date in January that suits them best, especially based on the wellness of the crops and the sheep. Jack likes to celebrate them both.

He is between them, the first heavy storm and the date of his mother’s choosing, when Jack is out in the woods chopping firewood. The trees nearest the village have already been picked over—too many families stocking up for the long winter ahead, the ever expanding line encroaching deeper into the forest—so Jack is actually quite close to the nearby pond when he lays down his axe, tired and exhausted and sweating beneath his coats. _Just one more_ , he thinks, remembering his sister’s shivering from the night before. _For Emily_. 

Except when he goes to lift the axe again, the too-long sleeves of his father’s old coat keep getting caught on the blade. It’s cold, but Jack rolls back the farthest reaches of his sleeves a meager inch and prepares to finish his task. His eyes catch a bit of dirt on his skin.

His eyes narrow; the world is covered with two feet worth of ice and snow, and Jackson Overland thinks he’s found _dirt_ on his arm? He slides back the heavy sleeves.

Jack stands alone in the woods with his father’s old coat sleeves rolled back to his elbow and stares down in silence at the words that have presented themselves to him on the rise of his seventeenth year. 

He is slightly alarmed. 

The first word he recognizes is _guards_.

 

//

 

It’s almost a quarter of an hour before Jackson Overland has calmed himself enough to make out the rest of his script, and by then it’s already turning dark. His family needs their firewood.

The wagon is loud and clumsy as he treks the broken logs back home, and every few minutes he pauses to catch his breath. 

This is not what he was expecting.

(Jackson is _educated_ , thank you, no matter what those high-brows from the town think, and just because Emily has had an easier time learning to read than he ever did it doesn’t mean that he _can’t_ , it just means that maybe she’s a hell of a lot cleverer than him, and that’s not news to him, anyway.)

He stops at the edge of the woods in the twilight, just once more, to try to decipher the meaning behind the words on his forearm. He is terrified to show them to his mother, for fear of what she might think. He is even more terrified to show them to Emily. 

Certain that no one else is around to spot him, Jack holds his palm face-up and carefully slides the layers of his sleeves back, revealing a long, fine line of elegant cursive. It starts just a few inches away from his elbow and ends just shy of the crease in his wrist. When he spreads the fingers of his other hand across the thin and delicate script, the stretch of his pinky to thumb exceeds the whole of it. Jack thinks of small, fragile things and feels his heart clench. The very breadth of it makes Jack wonder at its frailty, yet the words are stark and strong against his pale skin, fierce and bold and steadfast. It might have been all be very romantic and telling, perhaps, if it said anything other than  _Explain yourself before I call my guards_. Jack blinks, twice, in case this time he might read them any differently.

He doesn’t.

 

//

 

It’s obvious that he’s not himself when he returns an hour late, and his mother frets and cooks an extra bowl of stew, and Emily works her hardest to mend the hole in his covers before she wraps it around his shoulders, body and blanket both freshly warmed by the fire. He’s removed the coats, and the single long sleeve of his tunic feels too thin, to weak to hide the secrets underneath.

It’s where he sits, alone again, after he has feigned sleep and both his mother and sister have succumbed to it, and reads.

And reads and reads and reads.

Could she be the daughter of a constable from one of the nearby towns? That would be just his luck, wouldn’t it, to be destined for the well-bred daughter of a rich man, he and his sheep and his staff and his silly tricks. And speaking of—he _knows_ he has a weakness for laughter and a penchant for mischief, but—guards? _Really?_

So not only is she supposedly wealthy, and probably very valuable to whatever establishment she’s a part of, but she’s also fairly well-protected then, and quite possibly not in the business of accepting shepherd suitors from the backwater villages beyond the forests thick. It appears his future self will not be any better at first impressions than he is now— _it’s just so hard,_ Jack thinks, _when every first impression hinges on the possibility of forever._

Also—according to the implications of his script, he may or may not possibly be under threat of jail, eventually. _Or so say the Heavens_.

Jack stares at the script on his arm like it might _do_ something, but what could he possibly want?

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he whispers into the crackling fire, lost and confused, and no one answers back.

 

//

 

When Jack feels himself slip backwards and downwards beneath the ice, his first thought is _Emily_ , his second is _Mother_ , and his third is _I’m sorry_.

He’s not sorry that he never found the courage to share his words with his mother or sister because _now_ —now they will know _why_ he never got them, won’t they? He was never supposed to have them, never meant to, never given the time to find or live out true love in the first place.

Which is the exact reason why he’s sorry for the person who will never get the chance to say the words on his arm, the one who may or may not have stupid words written in stupid ink over their body of some line that he will never have the opportunity to speak—or maybe they’ve already met, maybe he’s already said them and _I hadn’t noticed, I missed them, I missed my chance, I couldn’t see them or—_

_Maybe there’s no one, no one at all—_

And that is the thought that he leaves with, the last trail of consciousness before Jackson Overland slips into stillness, floating deep at the bottom of the pond.

 

//

 

When Jack Frost rises from the quiet depths, it is dark and it is cold and he is afraid.

The Moon tells him his name and whispers suggestions about _the frost_ and _the magic_ , but Jack doesn’t understand them—not until the crystallized ferns appear before his eyes, a temporary masterpiece made by accident, criss-crossed etchings and filigree swirls underneath an inky black sky. For some reason, Jack _knows_ magic. It is both new and bone-achingly familiar.

It isn’t until the following morning—hours after he’s left the strange, somber village and veered off the beaten path; never too far from the pond which he can’t help but feel is _his_ but far enough from the village to not feel suffocated with _light—_ that Jack Frost has the presence of mind to further the exploration of his… strange existence. As Jack inspects the dark blue threads of blood beneath his skin—dark and vivid against the pale, thrumming with (not _quite_ ) life, but maybe something like it—he finds the black ink _upon_ it almost by accident. It is like someone has taken a quill to his flesh, but no amount of scrubbing will make them disappear. Jack blinks down at the strange words, confused, and has no idea what they mean.

“Call my guards?” Jack whispers, then frowns up at the Moon. That much, at least, he understands. ( _How can he read? Did the Moon teach him that, too, the same way he’s learned to spark bursts of ice from his fingertips?_ ) “ _Who_?”

But as Jack Frost rapidly and frequently learns, the Moon is not very good at giving answers.

 

 

//

 

Jack Frost roams the earth, searching for a soul to believe in him. His tricks are many and the pranks fall easily—flying from his fingertips with an ease he can never explain. His games delight children and adults alike, but for better or worse, the credit is always given elsewhere: _That’s Old Man Winter again_ , they grumble, cleaning out their snow; _Take a look at the gifts Mother Nature brought last night!_ they cry, staring at the fresh blankets with awe; _Looks like the Snow Queen is at it again_ , their breaths coalesce against the crisp, frosted edged of their windowpanes, as they gently close their fairy tale stories to take a closer look.

“Why don’t they see me?” Jack asks, but it’s more to the forest than it is to the Moon, because the Moon never talks to him, anyway. Jack asks the nightingales and foxes, the small rabbits and the owls. “What am I missing?”

It’s nearly fifty years before Jack meets a Guardian, and the first Guardian he meets doesn’t speak at all. 

At least—not in so many words.

“You can see me?” Jack stutters, dazed by the brilliant display of glittering, goldstruck sand. 

Sandy is kind and patient, but very busy. Sandy doesn’t have all the answers, but at least now Jack knows there are _others_ , even if they are not the same. Even if they are not quite like him.

“The hell you think you’re doin’?” demands the Pooka, the Guardian that Jack probably likes the least and likes to mess with the most, but only because he doesn’t prove to be very friendly. (It’s a quality that he hopes for in everyone, but Jack isn’t sure why he feels that is so important.) Nevertheless, the first time Bunnymund catches him causing chaos in the Warren, Jack drops the fresh bouquet of flowers he’d been icing, and makes a fly for it, laughing on the borrowed winds.

“Ah! JACK. There you are!” calls a booming voice, the likes of which belongs to none other than North St. Nicholas, the toymaker with the castle in the high ice-cliffs of the secret arctic. Jack doesn’t like the way the North Pole makes him feel— _Jack already knows he is missing something, but he doesn’t think he’s going to find it with a bunch of rules and tight schedules and obligations; isn’t there supposed to be_ more _than that?_ —but North is persistent, and well-meaning, so Jack reduces his attempts to break into the Workshop to only four times a year. (Five, technically, but Phil never actually finds out about extras, so Jack lets those slide.) 

Jack meets Toothiana.

She’s lovely and slightly intimidating with all of her fluttering and fast-paced movements, but she has one of the most welcoming, mesmerizing smiles Jack has ever seen and—well. He’s seen a lot of smiles in the past century or so. (It is, in fact, one of the only things he is any good at.) 

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” she says, as gentle and bright as can be, and Jack doesn’t understand why he feels so disappointed. 

Jack picks himself back up and pulls back on the mask he likes to wear, the one that doesn’t show Bunny or the other Guardians or any of those other old legends the truth of him—that after a full century he is faster, and smarter, and sharper, and better with his magic ( _that he is still the boy that slipped out of a frozen pond on a dark night a hundred years ago, alone in the cold with a curse_ ).

Jack meets Toothiana. He pushes down the unsettling sense of _guess not, then_ , flips his staff over his left shoulder, and grins.

“Likewise.”

 

//

 

(The Guardians are very busy creatures by nature; through nature, Jack makes himself very busy.)

 

//

 

For almost seventy years, each time Jack had opened his mouth to speak to a new person, a well of anxiety lanced through him with almost incapacitating force. It was no far stretch of the imagination for Jack to attribute his fear to the sheer uncertainty of whether or not they would hear him, and—considering that they _never did_ —it started to feel like a bit of wasted energy. 

But still, even after a whole century, Jack can’t help himself: _What if it’s this one?_ he thinks, picking out faces in ever-growing, ever-crowding streets. _What if today’s the day? Maybe this time, this person—they will be different_. 

His initial attempts to draw attention to himself had been tentative, unsure, and cut with desperation. As time passed, his confidence grew, his tolerance strengthened, his acceptance deepened—and so did his perspective. His greetings began to take on bits and pieces of his personality, elements of his character, because—finally—Jack was beginning to feel like he was starting to know them, himself. 

Then later, as a consequence of time, monotony, of _boredom_ , Jack’s introductions shift again. His salutations transform into pet projects of curiosity and personal interest, as intentional as any well-orchestrated prank; during one particularly experimental year, Jack Frost’s overall behavior can be considered definitively _polite_ —or, arguably, downright charming. Too bad no one is in a position to enjoy it.

Which leads to another thought altogether: if no one else can hear the smoothness of his devilish charm or appreciate the captivating edge of his rapier-sharp wit, then surely there are silver _linings_ to having a silver-tongue and an ever-unknowing audience? After a little over a century, the rest of the world’s determination to ignore him is ( _never_ ) old hat, but the fresh taste of untapped potential for even greater amusement is ( _sometimes_ ) enough to appease him. If his listeners never listen, then there’s really no point in being chary with his words, right?

“Your mustache is stupid,” he shouts at large to a room of crowded magnates, sometime when North America is all about building a big transcontinental railroad, and the world itself does not end, does not _change,_ in that moment. 

Interesting. 

Jack investigates, and experiments, and finds himself another game. 

There is a very, very brief period of time in which Jack hangs around the schoolhouses in order to learn the art of well-reputed Shakespearean insults ( _“Thou qualling, milk-livered, canker-blossom!”_ ) and he picks up a thing or two from the Roaring Twenties, in particular (“ _Ya see?”_ ), but every so often, something genuine slips out from the heart ( _“I know a rabbit with more sense than you, and that is_ saying _something._ ”).

(And when all else fails, _“Your mother is a truffaluffaluffanut.”_ )

Jack likes to mess with the businessmen and the politicians the best, if only because they often look the stuffiest. Their mustaches are decidedly easy to insult, and so are their greedy fingers.

(Jack does like it when they start to call the railroad the Overland Route, though. It has a nice ring to it.)

The language changes and adapts with the rolling decades and Jack does his best to follow suit: he sheds his cloak for pieced-together garments, shoddily-made clothing he’d strung together from threads of frost and leftover fabric scraps, and every so often he revisits his meager wardrobe with the sort of determination only capable of invisible, immortal spirits with far too much time on their hands. _Why do I bother with layers?_ he asks himself, because he’s not exactly bothered by the cold. 

(The best highlight is during his one hundredth and ninety-seventh year, more or less, in which Jack learns that _yo’ momma_ jokes and _that’s what she said_ jokes can be combined into _that’s what yo momma said last night_ jokes; this excitement may or may not have been tempered, unfortunately, by the fact that he’d only discovered the true meaning behind the _that’s what she said_ jokes four years prior.)

Yet if this decades-long social experiment teaching him _anything_ , it’s this: for reasons he cannot fully explain—for reasons so strong and so _distinct—_ Jack is still hesitant, even after two hundred years of silence, to introduce himself. 

Jack starts to wonder if his fear of never being heard—which is as stark and as chilling as it’s been since the first night he existed—is very different ( _is very complex, intricate, paralyzing)_ , completely different, to his very real and complementary fear of never being heard _right_. 

It doesn’t quite make sense.

 

//

 

Until it does.

Until Pitch falls and the Guardians rise up again, and this time—he is one of them. Until Jamie _believes_ in him ( _“Jack Frost?”_ ) and ( _“You can see me?”)_ he fixes his latest mistakes, he mends his staff back together, he opens the memory box and remembers everything in bright bursts of color but _no—not now, not yet, there will be time to let this sink in, later_. 

It’s later.

Jack stares down at the words on his arm, belief in shambles, and whispers, “Is this… some kind of joke?” 

(Because wouldn’t that be funny—

Jackson Overland, back from the dead and reborn as the invisible Jack Frost, carrying the forgotten key to his true love’s identity on his skin for _centuries_ , without ever knowing why or how or _who_?)

“Fuck you,” he says to the Moon, and he doesn’t really mean it, even though he kind of does.

 

//

 

“But wouldn’t… I mean, their script should have disappeared when Jackson Overland died, right?”

Toothiana considers him carefully. Gently, she asks, “Is that what you think what happened?”

Jack throws his hands into the air. “Well, I don’t know! I’m not the same person I was back then, and we only share, like, half a name. He—I—we’re not exactly just regular ol’ mortal-status anymore, y’know?”

Toothiana’s smile turns sly. “You think love is reserved for mortals?”

His glare pans as dead as the colonial boy from the memory box. “Tooth,” he warns.

“Well,” her tone changes, shifting back into _business_. “A few things could have happened: either the partner you were meant for had a matching line somewhere that disappeared on their body when you slipped beneath the ice, and they believe that the unnamed young man they were intended for _did_ die, or perhaps there was never anyone with your words written on them at all.”

Somehow, neither of those options make Jack feel any better. He starts to feel his stomach sink, then he catches sight of the look on Toothiana’s face. 

“But you don’t think either of those things happened?”

Her smile is bright and brilliant, and her eyes are soft, and somehow the whole expression makes centuries-old Jack Frost feel very, very young. 

“Your situation is… _unique_ , Jack. If your course to becoming a Guardian could span the length of centuries,” Toothiana argues, “is it really so hard to believe that maybe _destiny—_ your _soul_ —would recognize that?”

It occurs to him that he has no idea if Toothiana still has a script on her body.

“What… what are you saying?”

“You’re immortal, Jack,” she says, because maybe— _maybe_ —Jack cannot yet fully comprehend. “Did you really think your journey would be limited to one lifetime?”

 

//

 

She’s right, of course. As usual.

And so Jack begins to believe her: it starts to make sense that he was never supposed to _know_ (remember discover _find_ ) his someone from the beginning, because he wasn’t the person that he is now, he wasn’t yet whoever his soulmate would need. 

The seasons pass and the years turn by, now with the ever-fresh surge of children’s belief threaded into his veins, with Jamie’s as the knot that holds them all together, inside him, knitted somewhere near his heart. It gives him something sturdy and solid to hold onto, something intangibly tangible when memories of darker centuries creep in, and the strength of their conviction in his freedom and his fun feeds his power until he is wild with it, until he is bursting with magic and light and the thought of, _I’m ready now, let me find you, I’m here_.

And all the while Jack keeps the sleeves of his hoody long, keeps the vulnerable skin of his forearm concealed, and tries not to feel anything too close to impatience, or disappointment, or hope.

 

//

 

[ ½ ]


	2. ii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _4/24/16_. It feels SO WONDERFUL to finally finish this.
> 
>  **BETA'd** by the loveliest of lovelies, **ABIGAIL** and **SOCKS**.  
>  Thank you, again, to **XRIS** , for agreeing to do this super-intensive collab and putting up with the long wait for the second half and just ultimately being a really inspiring and awesomely creative individual in general. ♥ And for also making this gorgeous [edit](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com/post/140242603642/knightsquall-not-in-so-many-words-a-jelsa-fic), OF COURSE. 
> 
> Thanks, everyone! ♡ ~~Especially the cheerleading squad who I periodically messaged this weekend with all capslock and/or wordcount check-ins and/or snapchat videos of me stress/angry-cleaning to "Let It Go."~~ ♡♡♡ I AM VERY, VERY GRATEFUL.
> 
> [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com).

 

_elsa._

* * *

 

  
Anna refuses to believe her script. 

“But this _can’t_ be right!” seven-year-old Anna cries, and Elsa can hear her sobs echoing down the hall. When she edges closer, she presses her ear nearer to the crack in the door—but not _too_ close—and Elsa’s frown deepens over the sniffles getting lost in their mother’s gown. “Mama, it _can’t_!”

“Hush, now,” Mother whispers, and Elsa’s heart _clenches_.

“It can’t, it can’t, it can’t,” Anna insists, her young heart already broken. “This _can’t_ be my fate!” A hiccup, and the fabric hugging Elsa’s fingers stretches and strains. “Mama, it _can’t_ … can it?”

Elsa holds her breath so that she can hear her mother’s answer—but _not_ breathing means having less control, and less control means ice in her lungs and frost in her fingers beneath the gloves and panic in her heart, and so Elsa ends up missing a portion of her mother’s words anyway.

“It can, because it _is_ ,” their mother soothes, for Anna has let out a fresh wave of disheartened cries. “We cannot choose the words that come to us—we can only choose whether to accept them as the gift that they are.”

 _Gift,_ Elsa thinks, and _oh_ —if only it were so easy.

“But—but what am I supposed to _do_ —with—with ’ _carrots’_!”

Even from outside the corridor, Elsa can hear her mother struggling not to laugh. “There are far worse words that could be written onto your skin, my dear.”

“But—!”

The rest of the evening dissolves into conversations about what _should_ have been written on Anna’s skin, talk of knights and white horses and chivalrous princes and _may I have the honor of this dance, your highness?_ and _I will slay the dragon!_ It is a surprise to no one when Anna’s tears eventually turn to giggles.

“Maybe his noble steed will be hungry?” Anna surmises with a laugh, her faithful optimism restored. “Maybe my first words will be, ‘Should I remove the dirt from the vegetables, sir?’” And then the laughter overtakes them both. Elsa feels her heart growing lighter, even as it sinks.

Just when she starts to believe that it is time to return to her rooms—for she has surely stayed past her due—a question cuts straight to her core.

“But, _ugh!_ What did Elsa do when she got her words?” Anna wants to know. Her voice is more curious than petulant, but there is a string of sadness to her words that feels decidedly _put out_. Envious. “I bet she didn’t cry or get riled up, or anything,” Anna guesses, as Elsa leans more heavily against the wall. “I bet she probably got, like—something really smart and poetic and romantic, didn’t she?”

For a moment, Elsa’s pounding heart is the only noise in the stretch of their mother’s silence.

Then, “Perhaps one day,” the Queen says, “when she receives them, I will be able to answer your question.”

 

//

( _“But then… why does she always wear the gloves?”_ )

//

   
Anna’s words have arrived in the summer of her seventh year, just above her right ankle. The royal seamstress is summoned immediately, under the most stringent precautions. Elsa is not present for the fittings of Anna’s new wardrobe, of course, but she knows that the loyalty and trust with this woman runs deep; she is, after all, the same woman who designed and procured an entire selection of beautiful new dresses for the Queen during the days of her youth… to cover the words at the base of her neck. Anna begins to wear thick stockings and tall boots all the time, even at the height of July’s heat.

They are not actively encouraged to mingle, the two sisters, and Elsa is far more practiced at avoiding awkward and painful encounters than anyone gives her credit for. However, Elsa sometimes overhears Anna lamenting the _inconvenience_ of such secrecy—especially in the summertime. (“ _How does Elsa survive being so covered up all the_ _time! Ugh, I’m sort of glad I’m only just me, and not the Crown Princess, because if I had to cover up every possible inch of me at all times just on the off chance that my words will be revealed right as I’m talking to a foreign diplomat who has a Prince to marry off, then I’d lose my stinking mind—!_ ”)

Elsa knows that the privacy Anna now displays is completely typical, perfectly _ordinary_ , but the thought of Anna having to hide _any_ part of herself is—it’s. Well. Too much to stand, frankly.

Even more so than the year that phrases like _arranged marriages_ first begin to creep into her lessons, the basic histories and complexities of political navigation in a world where alliances are built first and foremost on the precious ink that no one is ever willing to share; where the marks on one’s body can sing and screech like a weapon in the wrong hands, wrong minds, wrong kingdom, wrong bargainer; where _destiny_ can be used as leverage, can be made out into sacrifices in the shape of cunning betrothal and _the scripts do not match_ , _you understand_ , _and we will be requiring_ _compensation for our child’s loss_.

A world where, somehow, there are some words that were never intended to _lie_ , and still the ravenous twist them, taint them, curl them for their own.

The lessons on arranged marriages are perfectly perfunctory, of course. With things as they are now, her parents would never agree to such a thing. It’s for the best, that her words have not yet appeared; for the better, perhaps, that she should never receive them at all.

Fate has already been cruel enough.

//

 

(And yet.

Elsa still sometimes wonders, in the deepest recesses of her heart—the parts too buried to be visible to anyone else, and not even always to herself— _and only ever when she has the luxury of it, during the brief glimpses of blind fantasy that anything in her life is within her control_ —

She thinks about the words that might appear on her skin, straight from a stranger’s mouth.)

(If ever asked what she would _like_ them to be—which she won’t be—daytime Elsa might consider something pragmatic, such as, _Your Highness, it is a great honor to meet you_ , or _Pleased to make your royal acquaintance_ or any of the other drivel that has been politely laid at her feet by the few diplomats who used to be allowed into the King’s Great Hall. Nighttime Elsa’s wonderings don’t bear thinking about.)

(But she hasn’t the energy even for daylight’s soulmate pragmatism because of all the energy spent on things like _reality_ , and inevitability, so she takes the other possibilities and buries them where they won’t ever be found.)

 

//

 

( _Because that’s the other thing, isn’t it?  
_ —in order to meet one’s match, one must first _meet_ anyone at all.

And one cannot meet a _soulmate_  
if you are dangerous and disastrous and hopelessly lost,  
and determined  
not to be  
found.) 

 

//

 

When Elsa is sixteen, she overhears of a popular town rumor from one of her ladies in waiting: the Crown Princess’ script is hidden beneath her gloves and, according to the more romantic hopefuls of Arendelle, inked delicately along the inside of one of her delicate fingers.

It’s laughable—and truly, she almost does.

But the more that Elsa considers it, the more she begins to wonder, and the more she begins to worry, and by the evening dusk the panic has crept in so deeply that she cannot _breathe_ because what if they’re _right?_ Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or within the next year, but what if the words meant to guide her soul are spread neatly across the very parts of her that are destined to destroy it?

(But then, at least, no one else would ever see the words. She might never even have to lay eyes on them, herself.)

 

//

 

So when Elsa, at seventeen, settles down one evening and spots a trail of small, scrawling letters over the hill of her right shoulder as she prepares for her bath, the water freezes so hard and so quickly that the ceramic cracks, and so does her armor.

  

//

 

At eighteen, nothing has outwardly changed: Elsa still takes her own measurements, alters her own clothes with the seamstress’ patient and distant guidance, and she wears a pair of fine gloves for all the world to see.

But there is a strain in Elsa’s stance that wasn’t there a year go, and there is a tension to the line of her shoulders that is more than what it seems. Elsa does not _hunch_ , she would never _slouch_ , and when she stands she is nothing but tall and regal and perfectly controlled, the picture of restraint and dignified consideration.

But sometimes Elsa’s hands are so cold, they burn, and the hollow space above her collarbone burns with them.

 

//

 

It is impossible for Elsa to remain in her room _all_ of the time, no matter how much she or anyone else may try to make it so. Errands and meetings with the King and important meals are all inevitable trials of her strength, and Elsa faces them with as much composure as she possibly can… for as long ( _as little_ ) as she can manage.

The only times throughout the week in which Elsa is truly able to find something like actual contentment—not quite peace, but maybe as close as she will ever get—is when Anna leaves the castle grounds to go riding with the King through the closest range of nearby forests. The reasons for this relief are both obvious and far more complicated than they should be.

Nevertheless, they are the only moments in which Elsa finds herself roaming the castle for nothing other than the pure truth that it is her _home_. When she is particularly daring, she lets gloved fingertips brush against mortar and rosemaling; she is never reckless—although, sometimes, she has to wonder.

So it is the winter of her eighteenth year, and it is a long, powerful one ( _harsh_ , they say, _and biting—_ ) and this morning Anna is out riding with his Majesty. It makes it dangerously easy to allow herself into the private courtyards, to sit upon her favored bench amongst the blanket of snow and the floating snowflakes. No one is likely to disturb her, not while she stares up at the bright white sky from the frame of her garden’s hedges, until her eyes start to sting from the wide open endlessness of it, until the burn of everything else fades. She wishes she could appreciate the beauty of it more.

( _But this winter is too calm.  
__Too tame, too_ quiet.  
_It shows nothing of its capabilities,  
__shows nothing of the possibility of destruction or disaster or bitterness;  
__it only falls, softly onto the earth,  
__quiet and calm and gentle,  
__and though Elsa is trying trying trying,  
__these things she is_ not _—_ ) 

The sigh escapes her before she realizes that she’s been holding it in, and as her bright, wild eyes watch the breath coalesce into the sharp whiteness against the expanse of snow at her feet, it’s then that she notices the boy crouched in the snow before her.

She stumbles back against the stone bench as she rises, crying out. Elsa manages to catch herself before she falls completely over the edge of the bench, but the boy is not so lucky—he slips, sprawled out in a freshly-ruined patch of thick snow and alarm rings out into the courtyard as the boy falls back with a yelp and a wide-eyed shock of surprise.

( _How—!_ )

Her heart races and her hands shake and there is a tremble to her throat jaw lips brow shoulders _mind_ — 

“Explain yourself before I call my guards,” Elsa hisses, sharp and biting like jagged broken ice, composure tight and controlled but her insides so thoroughly rattled as to be _dangerous_ , and the regal poise she so desperately clings to is suddenly nowhere to be found. (But she doesn’t care, she doesn’t _care,_ because there is a stranger in her courtyard and a young man sprawled where he shouldn’t be and is that—are those— _bare feet?_ )

The boy is staring at her.

Staring up at her, motionless, and as the screaming moments tick by, her glare grows extremely difficult to hold onto, but Elsa _does_. She glares down at him with all of the might she can ( _cannot_ ) unleash, and _breathes_ ; there is a stranger in her gardens—and he has no idea who he has stumbled into.

This boy is a fool—or very lost, probably both—but either way he is not supposed to be here, and she cannot ( _will not!_ ) let him put everything she knows and has worked so hard for into jeopardy. If he is in some need of direction—to the nearest shoemaker, or otherwise—then as royalty it might be her duty to provide some, but as _Elsa_ , as the bearer of this wretched curse—it is not her responsibility. If she does not act quickly, it may not be in her power to do so at all.

“How did you find your way inside here?” Elsa demands, which is not quite the forceful speech that she’d decided to bestow upon him before fleeing into the castle, but it’s what escapes her mouth. Her nerves are frayed, she isn’t thinking clearly, the gloves will only do so much, she should leave, _now_ —

Elsa’s thoughts, actions, feelings come to an abrupt halt as the boy tentatively places a hand into the snow. His fingers spread wide at the bottom of the thick sheet—she can _feel_ it, the cool touch of cold fingers against the ground, stretching into the hidden sheet of day-old ice—and then he is slowly lifting himself up, standing on joints that seem to ache with something that cannot be age, with a hesitation that speaks of pain she cannot see.

He is… he is much taller than she’d realized, and out of the corner of her eye she sees that he carries a staff, that his clothing is strange and unfamiliar, that his garments seem to be covered in a fresh sheen of—

She does not like the way he is looking at her.

( _That,_ cries the storm,  
_is a lie_.)

“You… can see me?” he whispers, like that is any kind of question to ask, like that is any proper way to… 

“ _No_ ,” Elsa whispers back, panic exploding deep inside her chest.

The boy’s eyes widen further, impossibly wide, and there is true _fear_ on his face, and wonder, and too many expressions that Elsa dares not name, _who is this boy, what does he want, where did he come from_ , what is she supposed to _do_? Elsa has the horrible, horrible feeling that his expression precisely mirrors hers.

“N-No?” the boy echoes, confusion etched painfully into his brow, made doubly worse by the way his whole face tightens as he leans closer, searching her eyes with his. “But—you can hear me,” he pants. “You—you can definitely hear me. Right? Can you… can you see me?” There is a hopeful twinge of desperation in his voice, desperation in her racing heart and pounding mind and itching fingertips, and so Elsa does the only thing that seems sensible.

Eighteen-year-old Elsa lets out an indignant, dignified snarl of frustration, and she turns on her heel, and storms away.

 

//

 

She is seeking out the palace guards to calmly inform them that a strange, lost boy has accidentally stumbled into their private courtyards ( _how?_ ), preferably before the King returns and no doubt jumps to the worst of conclusions. However, as she's tracking melted snow and shocked anger all through the stone-covered lower corridors, the most recent on the list of her greatest fears catches up with her.

“Hey! Wait—wait a minute!”

 _How dare—!_ “I shall not be spoken to in such a manner!” Elsa huffs, aghast. “You break into our private gardens—” ( _how_!) “You startle me, give no explanation of yourself or your intentions, and then dare presume to order me around!”

“Whoah, hang on, I'm not, like—presuming, or whatever— _okay!_ Okay, wait, hold on, maybe _—_ ” He calls after her, but Elsa’s footfalls are pounding so thoroughly against the mortar that she cannot even hear his steps behind her. “I'm trying to explain!”

His voice catches on ‘explain’. _Well, good,_ Elsa thinks, _he can explain himself to my—_

A thin crackling sound shudders through the corridors. Elsa _feels_ the sudden frost emerging unnaturally onto the stone floor, but—

(But she has never felt it quite like _this_ ,  
a burst of ice that is at once so deeply laced  
with the _feeling_ that comes  
from the storm inside her  
yet feels so _separate_ from her,  
more different than familiar.  
  
And on the one hand she _knows,_ somehow,  
that this magic does not belong to her,  
but _there it is_ : the frost stretching wide  
and thick over the stone slabs  
beneath her feet and  
_Elsa cannot help it, cannot stop_  
the panic from  
clawing at her lungs.)

“ _What?_ ” Elsa mouths, because there is hardly any breath left to pierce the words through the shock of cold air, her whole body tingling, fingers shaking, _blood thrumming, heart pounding._  

The reason she cannot hear his footsteps, Elsa realizes, is because he is not taking any.

“I think,” the boy says uncertainly, when he lands just a few short paces away from her. Elsa stares. “I mean… I don’t think I introduced myself very well.”

 _He has magic_ , is all she can think, staring at the young man’s chagrined face. _Like mine_. She glances to his feet, now planted firmly on the ground. _And more._

“Who are you?” she asks, her voice so strong that it’s brittle, her fingertips itching to remove the gloves and run her hands over the frost painted over the stone, to feel it. She clenches her fists, tighter.

“You… don’t know?” he ducks his head to look more closely at her eyes, like he doesn’t believe her; her hackles raise. “You don’t know my name?”

“How could I?” Her offense is clear. “Why should I lie?”

“I didn’t mean… it’s just…” The boy looks up, suddenly, and seems to realize that they are inside one of the long mortar archways that lead in and out of the inner-courtyard of the castle, a pathway that is supernaturally layered with ferns of frost. “Is there someplace we could talk?”

Elsa is aghast. “Are you insinuating that I should invite you in? A trespasser?”

“Oh. Well. Yeah, I guess it’s sort of weird, when you put it like that. I just meant—huh.” He ruffles the hair at his temple. “I don’t know if you’re aware of how this works, but I think at the moment you’re... the only one who can see me here? Unless there are kids in the castle…? But I don’t think so. _Are_ there kids in there? Because if there aren’t, then I’m willing to bet that one else around will be able to notice me, so this will look sort of strange? You know? For you to be talking to yourself? Unless you do that often?” Elsa stares at him. “No? Okay, just checking. The point is that you’re probably the only one who can see me… And it’s not like you were really _supposed_ to either, because you’re so old, but I’m still trying to figure that part out. Do you read a lot of fairy tales?”

She begins to reconsider. Perhaps having a possible ally ( _or a confidant, a_ mentor _, a guide_ ) wouldn’t be worth the risk.

“Wait,” he backpedals, impossibly pale, noting how Elsa has actually taken a subtle step backwards. “I didn’t mean to say all of that at once, I just— _dammit_! Tooth and Bunny are so much better at working with the older ones, I keep messing this _up_ —”

With a rather unladylike groan, Elsa swipes a hand through the air and declares, “Enough.”

And then, like slipping on a pair of old familiar gloves—there it is. _There_ is the composure that she has been reaching towards, the reined ferocity of a Crown Process soon to take her reign. “Either you explain to me who you are and what your purpose is,” _and why you have magic and what you can teach me about mine_ , “or you leave immediately, without harming a single inhabitant of this kingdom or this castle, and spare yourself the dire consequences of the justice of Arendelle.”

“Whoah,” his eyes widen, for the first time recognizing what a precarious position he is in… until he laughs. “Whoah, no. Sorry, miss—er. Lady? Noble person. You’ve got it, like—all wrong. I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

She will correct his assumption of her title soon enough. “No?” she challenges.

“ _No_ ,” he replies, emphatic. “No, I’m—I’m a Guardian.”

 

//

 

(“ _Fine_ ,” she says, against her better judgment, or what’s left of it. “ _But first, tell me your name._ ”  
She cannot understand the reluctance in his expression. 

“ _It’s Jack_ ,” he says, his voice suddenly gone quiet and thoughtful and plain, like a secret—like an old, forgotten secret. “ _Jack Frost_.”)

  
  
//

  
(It does not occur to her until much later   
that he does not push for hers.)   
  
  
//

 

She does not take him to her bedroom.

This, indubitably, requires no explanation.

“Wow,” he marvels, spinning full-circle to take in the sight of the tiers of books. For some reason, he reminds her of Anna. His eyes gleam with a playfulness that, quite frankly, is still not warranted. “It would appear,” he loftily observes, “that you like to read a lot.”

She does. “It’s my father’s.” Elsa nods indiscernibly towards his portrait on the far wall, and Jack lets out a low whistle.

“He looks pretty important,” Jack veers toward it, tossing the comment over his shoulder. He is trying to communicate something with his eyebrows. Elsa does not know what to make of it.

“He’s the King.”

Jack comes up short. “Oh.”

He says nothing else, to the point where Elsa begins to wonder if he might flee at any moment. (She doesn’t _want_ him here, but to have him leave so quickly—without any sense of true explanation, or closure, or _answers_ —well, that’s not what she wants either.) Elsa takes pity on him, and joins him near the portrait. She keeps a polite, proper distance.

“So,” he’s thinking out loud, “I guess that would make you… a princess, then.”

 _Crown Princess_ , comes a voice, dredged up from the dark spaces of _habit_ and _duty_ and _birthright_ , and the sadness and dread that come with that voice prevent her from answering immediately. “Yes.”

If possible, Jack looks just as dreadful about the situation as she feels. A small huff escapes him, or possibly a sigh, and then he’s rubbing his fingertips over his brow, rotating his staff in his hand, playing endlessly with the left sleeve of his strange-looking cloak. “Well… I guess I should have seen that coming.”

The silence is growing distinctly awkward, but Elsa is too busy trying to figure out what Jack means; it isn’t so unreasonable to assume that a young woman in finery and living in a castle might be a princess, is it? She has the feeling that this is not exactly what he is referring to—that there is a deeper level of understanding at play that she is missing—and it bothers her.

( _And of course… there is still the impossible matter of what he first said to_ you.  
_But not now, not yet,_ later.)

“So, should I have, like, _bowed_ when I first met you?” he asks suddenly, startling Elsa from her thoughts. He twists towards her, eyes amused and eager, and Elsa is once again at a loss. “Or kneeled? Do I call you Your Majesty?”

“Oh,” says Elsa. “Definitely not. ‘Your Majesty’ is reserved for my parents.” ‘ _Your highness’ is proper_ … But that doesn’t feel right. _I can’t believe I’m doing this… Why am I doing this?_ “However… since you’ve altogether skipped most of propriety anyway, and since I’m still not entirely convinced that you’re not merely a figment of my imagination— _Elsa_ will do.”

“Ouch,” he winces playfully, although it does look like he is indeed hurt. “Figment of the imagination, huh?”

“I think it’s time that you keep your end of the bargain,” Elsa says, with a touch of frost. Giving her name had felt like offering a gift; perhaps she’d given it too soon. “I’ve provided a space for you to explain without interruption, and I have given you the time that you need to do it. Why are you here?”

This time, the breath Jack releases is clearly a sigh.

“Look,” he sweeps a hand through his hair. “To be honest—I’m not even sure I know where ‘here’ _is_. I was just going about my usual patrol and noticed a funny-looking storm, and when I went through it and came out the other side, I was closer to _here_ , wherever this is.”

“Arendelle,” says Elsa shortly, trying and failing to hold her disappointment at bay. “In the personal library of the King, in the presence of the Crown Princess—who you scared half to death not more than fifteen minutes ago in the courtyard when you appeared out of nowhere and claimed—of all things— _shock_ at my being able to see you.”

“Oh. Yeah,” he scratches his head, sheepish, while Elsa’s glare bores into him. “Look, it’s not that I don’t see your point, it’s just...”

“Jack Frost,” Elsa announces, and only just barely manages to keep the _command_ out of it. “I am going to ask you a series of questions. You should reply with either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Save the details for later.”

“Um. Sure?”

“Firstly,” and since she figures that all decorum is pretty much gone anyway, Elsa allows herself to cross her arms. “Do you wield magical powers of ice and snow?”

Jack looks decidedly uncomfortable. Elsa finds it unusually satisfying. “Yes,” he says, twisting and tossing his staff, and fumbling it. “Well, sort of. It’s not _just_ about the frost. All of my powers are something I got for my job… but the snow isn’t really my _job_ , or my whole job, at least. The frost magic was given to me as a way to have fun. Um. To help others have fun, I mean. It could have been any kind of power, I guess, but with the Moon it just happened to be snow. It’s something I use to help kids.”

Elsa tries to process that—any of it. It’s not working.

“Are you a winter spirit?” she plunges forward, ignoring the flood of discomfort trying to creep its way into her lungs.

“Um. Maybe? We don’t, like, call it that.”

“Are there more of you?”

“No?” Jack’s uncertainty seems to embarrass him as much as it frustrates her. “At least—not who have frost magic? None that I’ve met, anyway. I mean, I’ve always been pretty unique in that way...” He waggles his eyebrows, presumably for effect. She is unaffected. “Yeah. Anyway. No, I’m the only one.”

Elsa pauses, considering her words. “How did you learn to use your powers?”

“Really? I tell you I have a job and I’m good with kids and you just wanna know how I make snowflakes?”

Elsa is not amused.

“Okay, fine,” Jack backpedals, holding up placating hands, which is in no way diminished by the silly staff he hasn’t let go of—not once—even for a moment. “I get it. Fascinated by magic. Totally fine. Well, I don’t know—I just kind of played around with them, I guess.” Elsa’s heart continues to sink, but is interrupted by Jack shuffling his feet. He ducks his head, just a little, and says, “I mean… I sort of had plenty of time to figure them out.”

Something about his tone pulls at her. She takes a step closer.

“How… old are you?” she asks, peering into his face. Jack looks up, forcing a mild grin.

Chills run down her spine when the half-smile holds. He gently points out, “That’s… not really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.”

Elsa considers him.

“Why did you agree to speak with me?” she asks. Cuts him off, before he can repeat himself, “I’d really like to hear the answer for this one.”

“Well… why did you agree to speak with _me_?” he echoes, brimming with genuine curiosity and eagerness, and it’s so familiar and so similar to what’s rattling around in her ribcage, wild and unrestrained, that she isn’t nearly as angry as she thinks she should be. His eyes convey a meaning that she does not yet have the knowledge to interpret. “Not that I’m complaining,” he tacks on, quickly. “I’m grateful—more than you realize—but it’s just… you didn’t have to.”

She contemplates.

“I thought…” Elsa tests out the words, listening to the way they hang in the air, vulnerable and dangerous and thrilling. “That, somehow, you might... be able to help me.”

Jack’s eyes alight with possibilities. He cannot possibly yet recognize what she’s asking him for, but the sheer magnitude of what she is implying is already almost too much bear. “Yeah?” he breathes, eyes bright.

Her fingers are shaking. Her heart is too loud, and too rash, and this is _not_ at all how she’d planned her morning to go.

“I think I’m going to order a pot of tea,” she says, and does exactly that.

 

//

 

Jack keeps making little faces with each sip, but continues to steadily sip away, possibly out of some assumption of politeness or manners. She can only guess. Meaningfully, she gently sets the bowl of sugar closer to his side of the small table. Jack gratefully pours a heap into his cup. Elsa tries to remember her own manners.

( _If you were courting,  
_ says a voice,  
_an arrangement for tea wouldn’t be  
__appropriate for yet another few weeks._  

 _And not_ , says the voice,  
_without a chaperone_.) 

But this is not courting and Jack Frost isn’t a noble from a distant kingdom here for her throne. (She is not, as a matter of fact, entirely certain that he is human.) This isn’t romance; this is business. ( _This is survival_.) Elsa sips her tea, and begins.

“I invited you inside because you demonstrated a knowledge and capability of frost magic,” she tells him, with all the gravitas that this truth holds for her. In return, Jack nods at her and pops a butter cookie into his mouth. (Then another.) Elsa merely stares… he appears to be listening, but also seems _distractingly_ distracted; she can’t recall the last time she’s felt so aggravated. “ _I_ have ice magic,” she blurts, and her chest swells with satisfaction when Jack stills mid-bite.

“You?” he mumbles, mouth full, eyes wide. She wonders if she should be offended, again, by his utter surprise.

Her brow slants as such. “Yes,” she replies dryly. “You know, for someone who seems so perpetually shocked by my abilities, you certainly expect quite a suspension of disbelief, yourself. Did you or did you not earn my attention by _flying_ after me through the gardens?”

“Uh… right,” Jack grimaces, clearly forced and clearly exaggerated. It’s as irritating as it is reassuring. “That’s fair. I just… didn’t expect… I mean, I haven’t seen or felt anything? About your powers, I mean,” he quickly clarifies. (Which is _odd_ , she thinks, considering that she’d felt his the moment he placed his hand in the snow.) “Not that I’ve really met anyone else who can do what I can do, but… I’ve never seen anything like mine before.” His eagerness is slightly overwhelming. “Can you show me?”

Elsa purses her lips. “Perhaps. I’d like to ask you some questions first.”

“Oh. _Oh_ , so like—you wanna swap tips?” Jack grins, then restlessly shifts and resettles in his seat. The chair itself looks too confining for him—like he’d rather be perched atop it completely. “We can _totally_ swap tips.”

“In a… manner of speaking,” Elsa brushes her fabric-covered glove over the handle of her cup. “The problem is… I may not have very much to share. I’m afraid my knowledge may be far inferior to yours.” She tries to let the full meaning of this pour out through her gaze; she wants to be very, very clear. “It is unlikely that this could be an equal exchange."

“For practicing magic with another ice-user? _Please_ ,” he laughs a scoff. “This is like Christmas.” He blinks. “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

“I don’t want to mislead you,” Elsa plows forward, because this is important. “Asking for any type of favor is very unlike me, but the fear of losing this opportunity is... too great. I would be forever grateful for any assistance you have to spare—especially,” she slyly recalls, “If you are, in fact, a guardian as you claim.”

“ _Claim?_ ”

“I could really use the help.” Elsa loses her nerve, for the space of a breath, and glances down to her tea. When she snaps up her gaze, he is studying her intently. She can see him piecing together his thoughts. Perhaps he is starting to realize just how awful of an idea this is.

“What… exactly is it that you can do?”

( _I don’t know_.)

“When I allow it, I have the power to manipulate temperature, climate… the weather. So long as it relates to ice, snow, frost. I can only make things colder.”

( _There’s a storm_ , she thinks.

Elsa ignores it.)

“But I don’t know how to control it,” she persists, and inside its cage, her heart gives a subtle clench. She’s never asked for this before—she’s never had the chance to. “I want to learn how.”

She sees exactly when the beginnings of understanding flicker into Jack’s expression: this is not exactly what he’d been hoping for.

“What do you mean by… ‘allow it’?”

  
( _Face it,_ says her soul,  
turbulent and fierce and wild.  
_You’re trying to get rid of it_. 

 _You can’t._ )

   
“When I was a child, I almost froze my sister,” Elsa confesses, to a perfect stranger. He doesn’t react: the same wide eyes, the same uncomfortable twist of his legs between two armrests on an extravagant chair, the same innocent look of confusion slowly dawning into recognition. He is so clearly out of his element, but Elsa has never really been in hers. “As a general rule, I _don’t_ use my magic." 

Jack blinks, startled. “Ever?” he grasps, with the most peculiar tone.

Elsa looks pointedly to her gloves; she can feel his eyes follow.

“Ever.”

 

//

 

(Jack ultimately accepts; after a long morning of surprises, his agreement to teach her about his magic is something that isn’t wholly unexpected. It’s refreshing.

And for the rest of the day, they talk and they talk and they talk. Elsa learns what it means to be a _Guardian_ , and how Jack came to be one. Jack learns about birthrights. They share the growing pains— _and sacrifices_ —of what it means to love and care for a younger sister.

They trade stories of their curses.)

 

(It has been a long, long time since Elsa has talked so much, to anyone.  
  
_It’s because he’s a Guardian_ , she thinks.  
_It’s because we wield the same magic._  
_Because we’ve loved, we’ve lost,_  
_we’ve suffered the same loneliness—_

And that is where this line of thinking ends.)  
  
  
(In any case… it’s nice to think that, maybe, someone might understand.)  
  
  
(But when night comes, Elsa does not allow him to linger. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to find the way back to Arendelle, he claims, and Elsa tempers, _controls_ her fear. 

“ _You’ll find a way back,”_ she says, at once both ignoring and acknowledging the faint ache in her shoulder.  
“ _How do you know?”_ His gaze sinks into her, digging and hoping and pleading, like there are any secrets left for her to keep. 

There are.)

 

//

 

(Jack returns three days later. Elsa lets go of the conviction that it was all a dream, and lets herself be grateful that he’s come back. It feels dangerous to miss him. 

He brings a basket of butter cookies.)

 

//

 

(For weeks, they talk, and not once does Elsa make a motion to remove her gloves. She can tell that he wants to _know_ , but Jack does not ask to see her magic again. 

He is deceptively patient, she thinks.

“ _I wish I could have been there for you_ ,” Jack says one evening. “ _When you were a kid.”_

It’s a nice thought, for a moment. Then Elsa lets it slide away.

“ _But this is fine, too_ ,” she decides, and turns away—before she can see his expression.)

 

//  
 

(One day, Jack brings with him a map.

Elsa does not recognize any of the landmarks… the continents, the kingdoms, the bodies of water…

“ _I don’t recognize this,”_ she admits, frustrated and confused.

Jack’s eyes actually sparkle. “ _I know_.”)

 

//

 

( _And isn’t it funny_ , she thinks _,_  
that the one person in existence  
who might be safe from her,  
who might be able to help her, if she’d let him,  
is her very first friend.  
  
Who could be more,  
if she’d let him.  
  
But soulmates are not without  
their caveats, evidently,  
because he has already outlived  
her life expectancy  
at least five times over,  
and this world is not  
where he belongs.

  
Fate is crueler than she’d thought _._ )

 

//

 

“Okay, look,” Jack begins, out of breath. “I didn’t want to say anything before because I didn’t think it was fair, especially since I didn’t really feel like you knew who I was yet and I wasn’t sure how you would take it, or if I could be sure of it myself because you hadn't said anything about anything, and the whole concept is just _stupid_ and archaic and it’s been centuries so who knows anymore, for shit’s sake, and how was i supposed to know if you’d even _want_ to know?“ 

“Jack, what _is_ it?” Elsa demands. “Just say it. You’re starting to scare—“

“There are these words,” Jack rushes out, eyes wide and desperate, and Elsa’s blood runs cold. “In my world, there are these _words_ that people have written on their body. They’re supposed to be—like, gifts, from the cosmos or something like that, to help you find the person you’re supposed to be with. Or—be close to, or whatever.” He’s panicking, just a little bit; Elsa can see that. She keeps her face blank, her eyes clear, and her hands absolutely, incredibly still. “There’s this belief that—that whatever words eventually appear on your body are supposed to be, like—the first thing that the person says to you, when you meet them, whenever that is.”

Elsa should say something. She should put an end to this, before he can go any further. She should tell him that she understands. That he doesn’t need to explain, because this phenomenon— _this belief, this everything_ —is something that exists in her world, too. It’s something that she, too, knows. Intimately.

“This sounds so stupid,” Jack groans, pressing his forehead into his hands. His fingers run back through his hair, and it’s a mess, the whole thing is an utter mess. “Look, I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it’s the truth, okay? Like,” Jack scoffs, and there’s a hint of self-deprecation to it that Elsa doesn’t like. “I mean, if the flying, immortal shepherd boy with ice powers wasn’t enough of a kick, how about some sort of eternal soulmate mumbo-jumbo trip to help make things even more complicated, right?”

Elsa should tell him the truth.

Instead, she asks, carefully still: “Why did you think I might not want to know?”

Jack looks at her. That thing, that _feeling_ that she’d been ignoring, the one telling her that she’s known exactly what he’s saying—it bursts. Her shoulder burns.

He doesn’t answer her, not immediately, and when he does, it’s not with his words alone. After a stop-start moment of hesitation, Jack carefully places his right hand over the cuff of his left sleeve, and pulls. Pale, pale skin, and dark, stark letters; when she reads the words on his flesh, her stomach drops.

“Because,” he manages, and even through the suffocating heaviness of the air, Elsa can feel the weight of both of their gazes on the marks over his arm. “These are the first words you ever said to me.”

 

//

 

Elsa should say something.

Jack is clearly miserable, and clearly regrets his choice of sharing the marks on his arm. (The sleeve of his sweatshirt is stretched all the way over his wrist so far that the cuff is clasped tightly in his fingers, the fabric straining against the unusual tension. He looks as awful as she feels.) The truth is that neither of them have spoken since he revealed them to her, however long ago that was. A minute. Maybe a few. It still hasn’t really sunk in.

“Thank you for sharing that,” she whispers at last, because if she speaks any louder the panic will be too great. Too tangible. “I mean it.”

Jack swallows, shakes his head. “Yeah. I know.”

She can feel him retreating, drawing even deeper into himself. It’s a horrible thing to witness. “It’s not easy to share something that… personal,” she tries, feeling her mouth run desperatelydry. “I know how hard it can be.”

Jack’s gaze swivels to hers, heavy with disaster and caution but alight with a spark of a tentative hope so sudden and bright that it overwhelms her. “Do you?” he prompts.

Out of respect, bravery, something—she holds his gaze. Chooses her words carefully. “It’s... not a custom that’s unique to your world alone.”

Jack shifts, twisting his body so that he’s facing her directly, then tucks his legs back beneath him. Elsa tries not to fidget. “You… The marks exist here, in Arendelle?”

Desperately does not swallow. “Yes.”

He lets his gaze rest on her for an eternity. The question that they both know lies at the tip of his tongue is something that by polite standards _should not ever be asked,_ and it actually appears as if Jack will follow this rule… even though he is probably dying to, even though Elsa knows that at the moment _not knowing_ is probably the most painful thing in the world besides losing his family, losing his Guardians, losing his believers. His unfathomable restraint provides a deep sense of relief and security, but it also sends Elsa’s head swimming, sends it _reeling,_ because if he _does not ask_ , then _how can she possibly find a way to—?_

“I haven’t received mine yet,” is what comes out of her mouth, and can never, ever be taken back. She looks to her gloves, to her open palms. “Given my… circumstances… I’ve always thought it might be best if I never receive them at all.”

When she finally glances up at him, he’s no longer looking at her. He must have had the time he needed to regain his composure, because composure is all she sees when she looks at him. She feels very, very young.

“Never?” he asks, with a catch in his voice that she can’t hold onto.

She closes her hands into loose fists. Wonders what he thinks she’s thinking.

“Perhaps,” she whispers, and squeezes.

 

//

 

She knows something is wrong the moment he steps through the window.  
She realizes what it is the moment she looks to his face. 

Elsa stares at him dead in the eye, and before he even has the chance, she infers: “You aren’t coming back.”

Jack’s eyes widen. “It’s not like that,” he tells her firmly. Elsa waits. He tries to hold her gaze, but ducks his head when her stare becomes too much. _I did this_ , she thinks, then destroys the thought. _Tell him_.

She waits for his explanation.

“Elsa… Look, it’s only for right now, okay? I just… the truth is that I haven’t been doing a very good job lately at… well. My job,” he explains, shoulders slouched and bare feet shuffling. The downtrodden uncertainty to his frame looks so unlike him that Elsa finds it’s hard to breathe. “And the others are noticing. Mother _Nature_ is noticing.”

She places all the energy in every fiber of her being into believing that an entity such as Mother Nature could exist—on some other world, in some other plane. It is a terrifying, liberating thought. It is impossible to believe, but she has _tried_.

“It’s… just for a few weeks, okay?” he tries to assure her. “I’ll still pop in whenever I can. I just… I can’t be here as often as I used to.”

Elsa holds herself very still. The strain of her swallow is noticeable to no one but herself. “I understand,” she tells him, because she does. As the future Queen, as an older sister, as his friend. “How often… do you think?”

She hates this.

“Maybe… every other week or so? It’s hard to tell.” Jack kicks at a spot on her rug. His hands are in his pockets, and this innocuous observation suddenly makes her realize just how far across the room he is, how much distance is between them. They aren’t ever particularly _close_ , but something about the distance strikes her now.

“All right,” she says, because it will be.

 

//

 

Despite all his warnings and his advance-apologies, Jack keeps his word. Elsa isn’t surprised in the slightest, and yet every time he arrives at her window, it is still something of a shock. She receives his wide grins with gentle smiles, and greets him with snacks and takes his tales of adventure with admiring heart and an envious mind, and lets him linger past twilight.

They don’t talk about the words tattooed on his arm.

( _She knows he thinks about it,_  
_every day, all the time,_  
_possibly every moment_  
_that they’re together._  
  
_She doesn’t ask,_  
_and he won’t either,_  
_and there’s nothing that_  
_either of them can really_  
_do._ )

 

And then, one night, they do:

“It’s kind of messed up,” says Jack, while they are seated beneath a bright window full of springtime stars. “I mean… something out there decides to scribble a bunch of words on your arm, and you’re supposed to believe that it’s going to just give you the answers to your biggest questions?” It does not escape her notice, that Jack is staring at Manny. “I spent way too many centuries waiting around for somebody to tell me what to do—”

“Oh?” Elsa’s brow arches.

“ _Hilarious_ ,” he deadpans, and nudges her thigh with his heel. Elsa slides her smirk a tiny bit higher, and pretends she doesn’t notice the flurry dancing inside her stomach. “You know what I mean. I spent way too many years just _waiting_ , trying to get answers out of somebody that was never gonna be able to share ‘em, and they were like… right under my nose, the whole time.”

( _Dangerous_ , whispers a tiny voice,  
but Elsa shushes it, the flurry that  
threatens to storm.)  
 

“Like… I could have gotten my memories from Tooth anytime,” he clarifies, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. She wills her heartbeat to slow. “You know? I could have, like… saved myself so many years of frustration, if I’d only know where to look.” He shifts his gaze slowly, gnawing at the inside of his cheek, and it is only _coincidence_ , it is all in her head, that the weight of his stare is directed at her. 

“But you wouldn’t have become who you are,” Elsa points out, falling back on logic and reason and probability; they are her most trusted tools. “If you’d have found your memories sooner, you might not have had the chance to bond with Jamie. You might not have been able to defeat Stitch.”

Jack snorts. “It’s _Pitch_.” He starts laughing, in earnest. “Like. Pitch _Black_.”

Elsa knows this. Her memory is remarkable but, luckily—Jack’s is not. It makes it remarkably easy to use it to her advantage. “I think I prefer Stitch,” she says, and lets herself be still, and silent, and lets herself watch ( _and watch and watch_ ) as he laughs.

“Yeah, remind me to tell you _why_ that’s so funny some other time, okay, I am trying to make a _point_. My point,” he plows on, before she can deter him once more, and oh _now_ he’s added a pointed finger for effect, “is that this guidance stuff is bullshit.”

Elsa tenses, ever so slightly. “Says a Guardian.”

“Not like that,” Jack jerks his head, jaw clenching just enough to be noticeable, eyes drawing once again to the sea and the stars and the Moon. “They just give you the tools. Not the answers.”

She tries to see where he is going with this; steers it to familiar territory. “Your powers?”

“Well, yeah, but like… More like I spent too long thinking that just because I was missing something meant that somebody was gonna hand me the lost pieces. The point is that Moon—these _words—they_ weren’t ever supposed to do the work for me. The only reason it took me so long to find my memories and learn what my powers were actually for was because I spent three hundred years thinking of pretty much nobody but myself.”

“That’s not true,” Elsa argues. “You brought so much joy during those centuries.”

“Yeah, because I was _bored_ ,” Jack groans. It’s embarrassment, or frustration, or who knows what. Impatience, maybe, that Elsa is still so determined to defend his honor when he will not. “Yeah, I liked causing snow days and making the kids laugh and doing all the fun stuff that I knew I could do, but… I mean. The questions I asked always came back to me: How can _I_ get a little attention, how can _I_ become visible, what should I do for them to get them to notice _me_?”

Elsa hesitates. She’d never thought about it that way.

“Yeah,” Jack scoffs, and flicks a snowflake onto the windowpane. It shudders into a layer of beautiful frost: a simple fern, no extra frills or especially impressive designs. This, above all else, alarms her.

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that it took me three hundred years to figure out why the Moon gave me these powers in the first place, pretty much because I spent most of that time waiting around and feeling sorry for myself and distracting myself by pulling pranks and trying to get people notice me by making them laugh,” Jack trudges on, eyes locked on the sea, “And I’ve spent even _longer_ rereading the same damn line on my arm and waiting around and wondering if I’m being an idiot.”

Elsa breathes.

“I’m just… I’m saying that maybe what I’ve spent centuries waiting around for isn’t what I should actually be looking for… you know? I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. Because even during the centuries that I didn’t _know_ what the words were, I could still _feel_ their influence, like what they were supposed to tell me. Like some stupid sort of memory-muscle-memory. Whatever. The point is that I think I’m making the same mistakes all over again… Maybe I’ve got, like—this _idea_ stuck in my head of what it’s supposed to mean, and it’s stopping me from making sense of what’s actually happening around me.”

He glances at her.

( _Conceal_ , it whispers.)

“That sounds like a good sign,” she offers thoughtfully. “To be open to new ideas. It might help you see things more clearly.”

Jack stares at the sea, the sky, the stars. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Maybe.”

 

//

 

(The coming of summer means that Jack’s visits become less frequent. He grows too restless when he can’t use his magic, and Elsa grows too restless when he _does_.

“ _I’ll be back soon,”_ he promises, but there is a strain to his smile and to the creases at his eyes that wasn’t there a week ago, a month ago, before the eternity of a confession. Elsa strains a smile back.

“ _I believe you_ ,” she tells him, because it’s important, she realizes, to tell him. 

And Jack leaves and returns, and leaves and returns, and things between them change: little touches, small glances, tiny grins, as the distance between them shrinks; little hesitations, stolen glances, sad smiles, too many _questions_ , and the distance between them grows.

Jack’s visits become less frequent, and they both say _summer_ , but Elsa tells herself, _you are no fool_.)

 

//

 

( _So it’s such a shame, then, that it all goes slipping_  
_through her pristine white-fingered gloves,_  
_when her parents die a needless death_  
_in a storm she couldn’t solve._

 _By the time Jack finds his way back to Arendelle,_  
_her parents are already dead,_  
_and the funeral has already passed,_  
_but really, she’s no more broken_  
_than she was to begin with._ )

 

//

 

( _“I want to help,”_ he begs her, and she believes him.  
But all she can say is, _“I know.”_ )  
 

//

 

“I think you should go,” declares Elsa, because she believes it more than anything. 

It is not a conversation that goes over well.

( _But logic and reason and probability are her most trusted tools._  
_They make her will strong,_  
_even when she is afraid_.)

“This isn’t helping,” Elsa states. It is a day of gray and rain, but what day isn’t anymore? And Jack, for all of his patience and nobility and immortality, is still mostly human.

“I know,” he replies, jaw so tight it’s almost a snap. “I _know_ , okay. I’m _trying_.”

Elsa shakes her head, unyielding. “You shouldn’t have to,” she whispers. “You shouldn’t have to try so hard.”

“I _am_ , though. Elsa… you know how much I care about you. Okay? You shouldn’t have to go through this alone, okay, you keep trying to be this mountain and thinking that you shouldn’t be affected by stuff, but you are, all right, and it’s okay, and it’s… Look, I know you think I’m only here because of the words on my arm, _okay_ , I’m not stupid, I know that’s why you’ve been pushing me away. And it’s not gonna work, all right, I know what you’re doing, and I don’t know what I can possibly say to get you to believe me that I don’t care about this stupid mumbo-jumbo on my arm anymore, it’s not what it’s important, but there isn’t anything that you can say that’s going to get me to leave you.”

“You’re only making things worse.”

 

//

 

( _Years pass. One, two, three—  
__and still, she cannot decide: which lie was more unforgivable?_ )

 

//

 

Elsa is nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. She is a Princess and then she is Queen and then, not-so-suddenly—she is alone. 

She is a mountain and a fortress and one with the wind and sky. There is a _storm_ inside of her, and it is _around_ her, it breathes through her and cries out with her and loves her and terrifies her and frees her like nothing else has ever done before. This is the song that she sings on the mountain in her kingdom of isolation, the ode to loneliness and freedom and taking her life into her hands and shaping it like snowflakes, and it almost kills her, to be reminded of how lovely the wind feels howling against her fingertips.

“You’d be proud, Jack,” she whispers over the balcony to the sunrise, and wishes she could believe it with all her heart.

 

//

 

(The daylight and sunshine sparkles off her ice palace like crystals, and she soaks them in with each step, each breath, each loving glance. 

But the sky grows dark and the air grows thin _—and Elsa isn’t bothered by the cold, not really—_ but regret isn’t exactly warm.)

 

//

 

Elsa watches the sunrise over the mountain peaks from her balcony for the second time, and wonders if this is what every morning will feel like, if it will ever get easier.

 _The past is in the past_. She won’t go back.

But she misses it.

 

//

 

Then the second night comes, and it is _hard_ , it is so much harder than she ever imagined, and it’s all her fault, all of it, and it’s staring her in the face.

She sees it in the ice walls and the crystal chandelier, feels it in the fractals in the floor and the fractures in her heaving breaths. Her failures, everywhere, so cold and real and urgent that it _burns_.

When Elsa finds herself collapsed on the floor at the base of the grand staircase, she knows she cannot stay.

She can’t go _back_ (to anything, to _anyone_ ) but she can’t stay inside, and so she runs _—_ back out into the open air, into the only place that doesn’t feel like it’s ripping the breath from her lungs. She takes the storm with her, lets it _grow_ in the wide expanse of the mountain top, lets the fester and fear all rage into existence around her. The storm sings.

And now when the failures stare her in the face, she cannot see them clearly _—through the blizzard, through the unshed tears, it’s all the same—_ until one of her greatest mistakes materializes in front of her, with less distance than she deserves.

  
( _Don’t feel_ , she hears,  
because the years have taught  
her how, but she is tired, and angry,  
and _trying_.)  
 

“Why did you find me?” she asks the emptiness, because she’s tried so hard to hide it all, and _what a foolish, reckless plan_. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” and “I’m not your problem anymore.” 

Elsa’s doubts come to an abrupt halt as the figure before her sets down in the snow. The soles of his bare feet touch onto the thick, fresh blanket, and—she can feel it. 

His eyes are warm but cautious. Her heart races in its cage as she stares at him, realizes that he is solid and present and that he'd be real to the touch, if she tried, while Jack looks to the castle in the blurry distance behind her, nods up. His gaze is careful and calm and it is a _lie_ , she knows, because she can feel it now—she can _feel_ the frost on his skin, the chill in his veins, the hammering of his not-yet-frozen heart.

Her own heart pounds violently against her chest. She breathes, and the storm carries on.

“You don’t have any guards in that castle,” he asks, almost a grin. “Do you?”  
  
Almost a grin... but not quite.

She is about to answer, about to _explain_ , when he takes in the full sight of her—and she is not the same _person_ that he knew three years ago, she wonders if perhaps he isn’t either—when his gaze catches over her bare shoulder.

“Jack,” she breathes.

He stares at the words, and she lets him read them, lets him take in the deceptively patient scrawl that is tattooed over the hill of her right shoulder. He can’t seem to move.

So she ventures closer.

Perhaps _too close_ , but Elsa is tired of being afraid, and tired of being angry, and she wants so _badly_ to fix her mistakes. She wants to apologize and beg for forgiveness and spend centuries making it right, but she doesn’t know how.

She is tired of waiting.

Jack swallows so thickly that she can see his throat working against the wind. He hasn’t dared yet to look in her eyes, and she tries to brace herself for when he will. It’s difficult for him to speak.

“When did they appear?” he asks, breathing too hard, or barely breathing at all.

And because the lies were her armor, and because her armor has been let down: “Years ago,” she whispers, but it’s not enough. “It was before I met you.”

She cannot read the expression on his face, but she can _feel_ the truth like it’s her own. The wind howls at them, and Elsa lets it.

“I thought,” she tells him, “that fate had already been cruel enough,” and she lets it _go_ , “to curse a princess with powers that could destroy everything, especially what she loved most… than to also guide her to a soulmate who would never be able to keep her.” She stares at him through the blur, through wind and snow and tears. “We’re not even from the same _world_ , Jack.”

Jack says nothing. He stares and he holds her gaze and he lets her ride the storm, and when she has had enough— _too much, not enough_ —she cries out, and begs, “I’m _sorry_. I’m _so sorry_ , I—I’ve known it was you for years, but I didn’t believe it right away, and by the time I did, I was already too scared to try.” Her gasping breaths are lost in the cries in the mountain, and still he says nothing, and Elsa rages on, “How is this supposed to _work_? We’re not even from the same world! You haven’t aged a day in over three hundred years! I won’t live long enough to—”

“We’ll figure it out,” he says, like he used to. Like he wants her to believe in him. She wants to. She’s _trying_.

“ _How?_ ” she asks, as tears fall and turn to diamonds on her cheeks. She brushes them away, furious.

She thinks he’s raising a hand to touch her face, but instead it hovers uncertainly over the hollow of her collarbone, fingers splayed wide and slow and careful. She freezes. And when he sees that she’ll let him, she _feels it_ —the cool touch of cold fingers against her bare skin, pressing down over the words that tells her he’s hers.

“Didn’t you hear me,” his whisper carries on the winds, “when I said that these stupid things were only ever supposed to help you find the person in the first place? They don’t tell you what’s supposed to happen afterwards.” He twists his hand, letting the backs of his knuckles brush over the words, lets his fingers curl towards the sky. “That stuff you mentioned…” He drags his fingers over her collarbone and his eyes snap to hers and, impossibly, there are shivers. “None of that would stop us, you know.”

Elsa stares at him. “How can you… why would you say that?”

“I said that before, didn’t I?”

A teary laugh escapes her, something still too close to a sob. Something wet slides down her cheek, before it is frozen in time, just like the rest of them.

“Not in so many words,” she attempts a laugh, because the only other choice is to cry. “No.”

Her face is suddenly his hands.

“I thought I knew it was you from the beginning,” he tells her, and she watches as the _caution_ leaves his eyes. “I thought I was waiting for you, and then I thought I was just supposed to be there for you, and then I thought that I was supposed to give you some time. I think I was meant to do a little of all of it.” He considers her. “Maybe more.” 

Elsa feels his thumb brush carefully over her cheek. She doesn’t need the ice, or her powers, or the frost to tell her so.

“I don’t think I was the person you needed yet,” she whispers, and these words, more than anything, seem right.

His thumb slides over diamond-etched trails, cold against cold against warm. He looks at her.

 

 

* * *

 

“ _You can see me?_ ” he whispers.

 

 

Against his lips, she answers, _“Yes.”_  

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> the [edit](http://knightsquall.tumblr.com/post/140184348346/not-in-so-many-words-a-jelsa-fic-by). ♡


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